With all the talk of Ken Price Sculpture: A Retrospective at LACMA this fall, we wanted to point out some of our favorite recent reviews and articles stemming from the exhibition:

1. LACMA’s Unframed blog has a delightful post on examining the forms and property’s of Ken Price’s “100% Pure”, 2005 - which is a part of Frank Genhry’s (designer of the retrospective) collection.

Ken Price, 100% Pure, 2005. © Ken Price, Photo © Fredrik Nilsen

Check out the video with curator Stephanie Barron, as she talks about collaborating with Price and architect Frank Gehry on the design of the exhibition at LACMA:

2. Sharon Mizota’s writes a wonderful review entitled “Ken Price’s Fantastic, Idiosyncratic Blobs” for KCET. 

Mizota states:

“A surfer, and a lover of jazz and the Dodgers, Price cared little for the machinations of the art world…

…Yet Price kept his own counsel. "All that Ken wanted to do was be in the studio,” recalls L.A. Louver gallerist Peter Goulds, who has represented Price since 1994, “He had a circle of very particular artist friends and individuals in the community that he kept close to and otherwise he wasn’t going to be running around going to every party in town.”

Ken Price, “Slate Cup,” c. 1972, Fired and painted clay, 4 ½ x 7 ½ x 6 ½ in., Collection of Joan and Jack Quinn, Beverly Hills, © Ken Price. | Photo: © Fredrik Nilsen.

3. Catherine Wagley of the LA Weekly asks “Why are Ken Price’s Oddball Sculptures at LACMA so Compelling?”:

Price would build up clay forms like these, firing them up to 20 times each. He had stopped using glaze in the 1980s and would instead paint the surfaces with layer upon layer of acrylic before working back into the color with rubbing alcohol or wet sand paper, making it look as if paint had eroded in places. Finally, with a Q-tip, he would add new, bright colors into those eroded spots, giving his sculptures meticulously mottled, multicolored skins.

Ken Price Sculpture: A Retrospective continues on exhibit through 6 January 2013.